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.The fragrance of winter plum blossom, sharp in the cold January air, teased his senses again; he heard his parents describing the crowded prayer meetings held for him in their local church hail; and in quick succession he saw the shocked faces of Abigail and Kao in Shanghai, saw Kao ordering him angrily from his Peking home, then struggling to free himself from the screaming mob around the Monument to the People’s Heroes.The day-old image of Abigail’s lovely face peering anxiously at him in the hotel bedroom lingered longest, and despite the feeling of strain that had persisted throughout their brief meeting, a promise of contentment seemed now to enhance the memory, and when Jakob finally opened his eyes again, he felt lightened and calmed.His aching head had cleared and although he was still aware of the soreness in his limbs, a feeling of ease flowed through his body for the first time since he was dragged down from the balustrade of the monument in the riot.A strong breeze was blowing and all around him the newly opened pink and white tree blossom was shivering and dancing in the early sunlight.The scene before his eyes possessed an ethereal loveliness and in that moment past and present fused suddenly, releasing in him a gentle feeling of joy.As he gazed down through the blossom at the palaces and lake-spangled gardens flanking the Forbidden City, he was gripped by a powerful sense of having arrived at an important destination — at the selfsame spot where his journey had begun.Despite the tragedies of the past, a feeling of goodness and beauty seemed to vibrate softly in the dawn air and a new certainty about the existence of a supreme divinity swelled within him.When he had sat in that imperial pavilion on Ching Shan Hill for the first time, his youthful mind had been guided by an untested and unknowing certainty, an unquestioning faith.In the wilderness of China, doubts had undermined that certainty, and he had eventually drifted into a vague and unsatisfactory ambiguity of belief.But even after he had encountered his crisis of faith, that first enchanted autumn dawn, he saw now, had continued to exert its invisible influence.It had surely played a part in his deciding to spend the rest of his working life untangling the threads of China’s politics from Hong Kong.Every man’s life, he realized suddenly, was to some degree a journey into the unknown, undertaken to understand himself.As he gazed at the new blossom trembling on the branches around him, he knew without any doubt that he had found journey’s end where it had begun, that by means of a long, tortuous trail he had traveled from autumn into spring.With these conflicting feelings of exhilaration and sadness mingling in his mind, Jakob rose and stepped out of the pavilion, letting his gaze range over the golden rooftops to the west of the hill.Somewhere below in one of those lakeside pavilions, a modern, despotic emperor who had misused his mandate to cause terrible suffering to his people lay slowly dying; his greatest and most loyal general was also sinking toward death in another anonymous old palace nearby.With the passing of the Communist “emperor” it seemed likely that much agony would pass too and perhaps hope would be reborn.Meantime, the hush of the early day enveloping the ancient capital seemed to convey that all of China was distracted with the waiting.Turning toward the east, Jakob noticed for the first time the forests of factory chimneys in the industrial suburbs; wispy plumes of smoke spiraled weakly into the lightening sky as though even the nation’s engines of production were misfiring in the uncertainty.Nearer at hand, among the gray-roofed hut’ungs to the northeast, he tried to pick out the building which had once been the Joint Missionary Language School and wondered sadly whether beneath its roofs Mei-ling was already awake and seated on her lonely chair.With her reason gone and all her love generously given as gifts to others, was the beauty of her soul, he wondered, still shining out of her with that same brilliance that was too dazzling to behold? The questioning thought pained him deeply and in an effort to put it from his mind, he turned to search among the trees and courtyard walls on the eastern bank of the Forbidden City’s moat.He was trying to locate the old single-storied courtier’s house where a four-year-old boy named Ming might soon be waking and searching for a toy.Unknowingly, Ming was carrying Mei-ling’s inexpressible hopes into the future, and the boy’s existence was all that made the thought of her misfortune bearable for Jakob.The daylight was growing and he turned reluctantly away and began walking down the hill toward the Forbidden City.For as long as he could, he kept his gaze fixed on the spellbinding vision of the blossom and the golden palaces spread out below, absorbing their exquisite beauty into his soul.When he entered the shadows beneath the trees the magic, revelational moments slipped gently into the past, but Jakob knew instinctively that the memory of them would remain with him always, a clear, sweet source of certainty and hope amid the painful regrets that had marred his past.8We have no yak meat to offer you this time — but there is tea!” Mao Tse-tung tried to gesture toward a low table that bore a tea tray but his right arm could only flap ineffectually against his side.For a brief moment a vacuous smile flickered across features that were waxen and pallid but it dissolved abruptly as if it had already cost too much effort.“That’s all right — I prefer tea to yak meat anyway.”Jakob spoke his Chinese slowly and smiled as two female nurses stepped forward to assist the tottering leader of China to an armchair in the outer study of the single-storied Ming pavilion where he lived.Three official Chinese photographers had already recorded the formal greeting which the chairman of China’s Communist Party had accorded Jakob on his arrival, waiting dutifully until the nurses had helped him up before taking their flash pictures.But Mao’s scrawny hand had felt cold and limp in Jakob’s grasp and when the nurses took him by the arms to help seat him once more, Jakob noticed that he meekly allowed them to position and maneuver him as they wished, without protesting.“My modest home is not as spectacular as the great tower of Chokechi.but it’s a little more comfortable.” Mao sagged down into the chair with his arms hanging over its sides, looking like a giant puppet whose strings had ben suddenly loosened.His gray tunic, buttoned high at his scraggy throat, hung on him like a tent, and as he mumbled his words, the vacuous smile appeared again.“We no longer need to sleep in hammocks And we won’t make you cross the Great Grasslands again after you leave here.”Jakob smiled politely once more in response
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